Embodiments of the invention relate generally to a thermal management system, and, more specifically to an impingement flow cooling apparatus that provides for thermal management of an external extended heat surface.
In today's market, electronic devices are becoming smaller and smaller, while also having more capabilities and computational power. As a result, it is important for electronic components and systems to be quiet, reliable, and have a small physical footprint.
While passive cooling systems, such as heat sinks, are the most reliable cooling systems, they are also the least efficient. In order for a heat sink to be capable of dissipating more heat, the physical footprint is increased by including extended surfaces such as fins, ribs, and other protrusions. Therefore, active cooling systems, such as air or liquid cooling devices, can be added to the heat sink to increase the efficiency. However, the addition of active cooling systems also may introduce other design challenges, such as acoustic noise and reliability.
The current prior art uses a combination of passive cooling systems, such as heat sinks, and active cooling systems, such as fans, which are limited with respect to physical form factor, operating condition, acoustic noise, and reliability. A drawback of the existing fan solution includes the associated acoustic noise with the moving parts of the fan. Another drawback includes the reliability of the fan solution. That is, an active fan thermal solution generally includes a multitude of moving parts that can break down. In addition, fan based cooling systems generally require a larger physical footprint to achieve the necessary volume flow rate of a cooling fluid, and this larger footprint can be problematic for electronic devices having tight space constraints.
Accordingly, there is a need for a thermal management system that provides active and passive cooling to an electronic device in a manner that allows for the thermal management system to operate with lower acoustic noise and increased durability without increasing the physical footprint of the thermal management system.